Reagan `Fit As Fiddle`

Surgeons Find `No Sign Of Cancer`

July 14, 1985|By George de Lama, Chicago Tribune.

BETHESDA, MD. — President Reagan said he felt ``fit as a fiddle`` Saturday night after doctors at Bethesda Naval Hospital removed a large tumor and 2 feet of his intestine during a nearly three-hour operation that surgeons said went smoothly and turned up ``no sign of cancer whatsoever.``

In an unprecedented action before the surgery, Reagan temporarily turned over the power of the presidency to Vice President George Bush, establishing the instant of transfer as the moment at which the President received general anesthesia that rendered him unconscious.

After coming out of the anesthesia about eight hours later, Reagan met with top White House aides in the recovery room and reassumed his authority as the nation`s chief executive.

``I feel fit as a fiddle,`` the 74-year-old Reagan was quoted as saying by White House spokesman Larry Speakes.

The transfer of power, disclosed in a letter signed by Reagan and sent to Senate President Pro Tempore Strom Thurmond (R., S.C.) and House Speaker Thomas O`Neill (D., Mass.), marked the first time in American history that a vice president has formally served as acting president while the chief executive was still alive.

Bush cut short his vacation in Kennebunkport, Me., to fly back to Washington and took over the reins of power at 10:28 a.m. Chicago time. Bush spent the rest of the day at his official residence in the capital before

Reagan signed a second letter reasserting his authority at 6:22 p.m. Chicago time.

Officials said Bush made no presidential decisions during his brief tenure as acting president.

The surgeon who led the eight-doctor team that conducted the operation, Navy Capt. Dale Oller, said a 5-centimeter polyp, or tumor, and about 2 feet of intestine were removed from Reagan`s colon and that the prognosis for a complete recovery is ``extraordinarily excellent, absolutely excellent.``

``It gives me great pleasure to tell you that the President of the United States is now postoperatively doing beautifully,`` Oller told reporters after the surgery. ``There was no sign of cancer whatsoever.``

Oller, chief of general surgery at the naval hospital, said the President should be able to resume doing paperwork in his hospital bed Sunday morning, and should be back ``on his ranch on a horse`` within about a month.

Another surgeon who participated in the surgery, Dr. Steven Rosenberg, chief of the surgery branch of cancer treatment at the National Cancer Institute, said, ``This operation went absolutely perfectly, as well as I have ever seen an operation like this go.``

Despite their optimism, doctors cautioned that laboratory analysis of the removed tumor to determine whether it was malignant may not be available until Monday. A preliminary biopsy of samples of the polyp tissue showed no signs of cancer, doctors said.

Rosenberg said that more than half of all polyps of this type and size prove malignant, but that even if the laboratory tests show the tumor was cancerous, Saturday`s surgery ``should, at a very, very, very high level of likelihood,`` have removed all the malignant growth from the President`s colon.

``If in fact there is a malignancy in the specimen, the only potential

danger--and we`re talking hypothetically now--the potential danger is one of spread from the local site to other sites,`` Rosenberg said.

Oller stressed that exhaustive tests conducted on Reagan`s vital organs before the surgery, along with a detailed look at the rest of his colon during the operation, ``showed no evidence whatsoever, however, of a tumor elsewhere.``

And despite being the oldest president in the nation`s history, Reagan was ``remarkably, remarkably healthy,`` Rosenberg said. ``Everything you`ve heard about the President`s vigor on the outside is certainly corroborated by the findings on the inside.``

Before the surgery, Reagan`s wife, Nancy, gave the President ``a big kiss`` and the couple told each other ``I love you`` before parting, according to doctors and White House officials.

Afterward, a relieved Mrs. Reagan, joined by her brother, Dr. Richard Davis, was told immediately of the surgery results.

``She was glad to hear that the operation went so extremely well and that he looked so good in the early postoperative period,`` Oller said.

The surgeon said Reagan will remain hospitalized until he recovers full use of his bowels, but that the President has ``extraordinarily excellent, absolutely excellent long-term survival rates . . . probably better than a 95 percent five-year survival rate.

``During the coming week, awaiting the return of his intestinal function and early recovery, I would anticipate that he will do some of his most important paperwork with his colleagues at his side,`` Oller said. ``I would expect that he would have a short period, perhaps two weeks, in which he would want to rest frequently. But he will be able to carry out many of his functions.``

Speakes said Reagan should be able to receive congressional visitors and